Actress passes away from cancer in Santa Barbara...

Adding further sadness to today's news at the loss of Pete Postlethwaite is the further announcement that Forbidden Planet star Anne Francis has passed away at the age of 80. The actress, who also played the title role in 1960s TV detective show Honey West, had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007 and succumbed finally from complications with a secondary bout of pancreatic cancer at a retirement home in Santa Barbara. Francis's daughter Jane Uemura made the announcement, and said that family and friends were with her until the end.

Anne Francis had the rare gift of professionally portraying naiveté, and it's hard to say if the innocence she was able to convey was any part of the fact that her quite sensational turn as a mad scientist Walter Pidgeon's daughter in Forbidden Planet (1956) didn't lead to any notable Hollywood career, for she was at least as good an actor as any of her more apparently worldy-wise contemporaries.

Francis's lead role as Honey West was well in advance of the 1970s female-driven TV shows such as Police Woman, Wonder Woman and Charlie's Angels, and was one which Francis treasured.

"She was probably the forerunner of what we would call the good aspects of female independence...Producers and writers I work with, young women in their 30s and 40s, tell me all the time, 'You have no idea what an influence you had on me with Honey West. You showed that I could do something unusual with my life, that I could have my freedom and not be dependent on another human being for my livelihood'.'"

Speaking of her casting in the Frank McLeod Wilcox SF classic, Francis said: "I don't think that any of us really were aware of the fact that it was going to turn into a longtime cult film, probably much, much stronger today than it was then. … Forbidden Planet just had a life of its own, something that none of us was aware was going to happen."

The actress is survived by Jane Uemura, daughter Maggie and a grandson.

LA Times

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